THE 'BURBS
3/5 stars
REVIEW BY JOHN ULMER
The opening credits of "The 'burbs" give us the impression of a film
that could turn out to be extremely witty. It's about a small suburban
neighborhood in Middle-America comprised of a bizarre array of really
wacky people. Tom Hanks plays the main character, an amiable guy who
has taken a week off of work, and is now just sitting around the house
all day in his PJs, suspecting that his new next-door neighbors are
hiding something. Another one of his neighbors, a paramilitary nut
with no war to fight (Bruce Dern), decides to investigate a little -
and they soon believe that the family is a pack of murderers.
As the film progresses onwards it becomes a bit dumb, especially
towards the very end, which was allegedly re-filmed after test
audiences did not like the original climax. Maybe they should have
kept their mouths shut.
The pack of apparent murderers is led by Academy-Award nominee Henry
Gibson, who is one of those great underrated characters actors, and
who always manages to creep out the audience without having to say
anything at all. The movie leads us to believe that he is a murderer.
What's awful about the end is the "twist" - or how sloppily it is
presented. I would have bought it; I would have been surprised by it,
if it didn't seem so forced and unbelievable. I started wondering
whether the whole ending was a dream sequence. Much to my
disappointment, it was not. But just now I thought of a way that the
film might have ended that would have sustained its dignity and
actually shocked people instead of embarrassing them with its
ineptness.
I will not lie: "The 'burbs" is pretty mediocre, and I can understand
why many people might dislike it. Yet as with many comedies from the
'80s, it carries a sort of charm and is almost criminally fun and easy
to watch. I just watched it again at 12:50 a.m. this morning, having
not seen it for quite some time, and it not only held my interest, but
I learned to appreciate the movie for what it is - again.
"The 'burbs" was directed by Joe Dante, a man with a lot of wit and
talent at making dark camp films. "The Howling," which I disliked, was
nevertheless superbly directed; "Gremlins," one of my favorite films,
was dark, humorous and smart; "Small Soldiers" was the perfect example
of a unique idea helmed by a man who knew what he wanted; and "The
'burbs" is just about the most solid example of Dante's style. Mixing
elements from Tim Burton and Steven Spielberg, Dante is one of
cinema's better directors, if only because he is great at presenting
us with crazy material and doing it tongue-in-cheek and not taking
himself too seriously. He's a man with a lot of imagination that
crosses over onto his celluloid; I don't think he's as much as a
mainstream sellout as he is an old-fashioned storyteller, like an old
man who gathers around a campfire at night and tries to scare his
audience, but manages to insert some laughs for good measure.
What propels "The 'burbs" past simple fun and into the realm of
strangely addictive and satisfying viewing is the subtle genius of its
plot. We all know about those closely-linked neighborhoods where
everyone waves at each other in the morning as they collect their
papers in their PJs, where the grass is always neatly-trimmed and
green; where the newspaper boys always randomly throw papers and miss
their targets by at least five feet; and the sort of neighborhoods
where everyone is always watching everyone. "The 'burbs" is a movie
with a lot of good idea, never sampled before or since in any
mainstream production I have seen. There will always be movies with
the stereotypical suburbs, but rarely will there ever be a movie that
mixes them in with the core idea of "The 'burbs" - that the people in
these suburbs all have quirky traits, and all take spying on each
other to an extreme level; to such a level that they would suspect a
strange new neighbor to be a mass murderer. "One day after mowing your
lawn you just snap!" Hanks shouts towards the end of the movie. "The
'burbs" is at its best when it's toying around with the suburb clichés
and at its worst when it is distracted by tacky subplots. It's
technically a rather poor movie, and I can understand why it received
negative reviews in 1989. But fifteen years later it stands as an
enchanting, but flawed, film that has an undeniably watchable
undercurrent flowing through its veins. If this movie were on TV a
week from now I'd probably watch it again, just like I have been for
years.
- John Ulmer
http://www.wiredonmovies.com
e-mail: johnulmer2003@msn.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 37574 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1271729 X-RT-TitleID: 1000003 X-RT-SourceID: 1382 X-RT-AuthorID: 6769 X-RT-RatingText: 3/5
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